 Hey everybody, welcome to the Waldoch Way. I'm Jessica, and today's video is going to be all about our morning basket for middle school. Now, if you have been here any length of time and you know that we have done morning basket for approximately five years, and our morning baskets have changed about, I don't know, four to five times a year, probably anywhere from every month to every three months, and they have almost always, always been themed. They've either been themed around a holiday, around something Emily was interested in, or around what we were currently learning, and that worked best for us then. This year, we're gonna try something different. We are going to keep the same morning basket for the whole year, all of 2023, 2024, maybe even all of middle school, we'll see, and it is not going to be themed. I know, gasp. Emily and I sat down together and we decided it was time for a change, and so this is that change. I'm gonna be sharing everything that is going to be in our morning basket, although I'm going to go ahead and tell you, chances are this is not going to be happening in the morning, and now that Emily has gotten a little older, she prefers to do her independent work in the morning, and then typically we have lunch and then do our morning basket or basket time or whatever you want to call it. And so this is what we will be doing during that time. Basket time, morning basket, morning meeting, whatever you would like to call it has always been the way that Emily and I connect the foundation for our day, and that isn't changing even though some other things are changing. While she may be doing her independent work first, basket time, or again, whatever you wanna call this, is still going to be the first thing we do together, so it is still allowing us to be able to connect. It's giving us the ability to go down rabbit trails, to follow wherever that may lead, and also kind of lay the foundation for what our school day together is going to look like. So without further ado, let me show you what's going to be in it, and as I'm showing you that, I will kind of explain how we're gonna be utilizing these resources, and then if you are interested, let me know down in the comments, and we could probably do a morning time with us if you wanna see what this is gonna look like in action. Okay, so the first thing that I have is what I'm calling kind of our life skills, and that includes four different books. We will not be using these all at the same time. We will rotate through them. The first one is our mindfulness for teens. It is 10 minutes a day exercises. There are about 60 exercises in here, and then we have the life skills for tweens. This is everything a preteen should know to be a brilliant teenager, and then we have money skills for teens, which is everything a teenager should know about personal finance, and we have success skills for middle schoolers, which is the essential middle school survival guide. Now, my plan, unless I say my plan very, very loosely, is to kind of alternate through these that might look like one exercise out of here and then a chapter out of each of these, so maybe we get through each of these like one section in a week, but if Emily is not feeling that and she's feeling one more than the other, I'm okay with completely finishing one, and then moving on. Because we're going to keep the same thing in there all year, I know we will have plenty of time to get through these, and we may even keep all of this stuff in there for all of middle school, in which case we have three years to get through this. So I'm in no rush. I think all of these things are really important, but that is kind of like what I'm calling this section is life success skills, and we'll be using these for that. Okay, then we also have the two truths and a lie books. There are three in the series. We have the It's Alive, the Forces of Nature, and the Histories and Mysteries, and basically there are like stories or sections to this book. So for example, like A or chapter one is over a thousand years ago, and then there's three stories within that chapter. So story A is Mammoth Cave's Mystery Walker, story B is Holy Moller's, and story C is a curse on all thieving bathers. So two of those stories are true and one is alive. So this section of our morning time that we'll include these, I'm calling Logic Skills. I really want her to kind of start to learn that you can't believe everything you hear and you can't believe everything you read and know how to critically think for herself because of that. So again, I have no preference on which one of these we do. If Emily's interested in one over the other, we'll start there. If she wants to jump around, that's fine, they will all be in the basket and she can pick and choose from these as she wishes. And then for what I guess we will call our language, I have two different things that we will alternate between the Best of the Mad Libs books. We've been doing this for a while. We're probably about a quarter of the way through. This is one of Emily's favorite things. I will say what we do now though, that she's a little bit older as we alternate. So she'll do one as far as me giving her the words and her writing and then we swap and she gives me the words and I write it. That way we're kind of getting to do something that's not just potty humor when I'm giving the words and also she's practicing writing and spelling as well. And then the dictionary of idioms. I love the idea of this. Emily is very literal, very, very literal. And figurative language is somewhat difficult for her but it doesn't come the easiest and then she always wants to know why. Like why is that even a saying? So this is more than 700 sayings and expressions and I'm just going to, let's see. Dot your eyes and cross your T's. Okay, that is the saying. There's a sentence using it. Mrs. Potter wants us to proofread our papers and dot the I's and cross the T's. The meaning of that is to take great care over details. The origin of that is an expression similar to this first appeared in books in the early 1500s. If you want good penmanship, you better be careful with things like the dots over the I's and the lines crossing the T's. Today this wildly used saying refers to being extremely thorough by paying close attention to details and whatever you do. So we can talk about figures of speech and figurative language. She can learn them to help expand her writing and make her writing richer, but we can also address that primal need that she has to know why, where it originated and what it means. And so my plan again, plan is to alternate these two. So like one day we'll read and I'm thinking we'll probably read a page. There are about three of the figures of speech per each page. So we'll probably just read a page and talk about them. So like one day we'll do the idioms and then one day we'll do a mad lib. And so a week might look like on Monday us doing this, on Tuesday us doing this with me writing, on Wednesday us doing this, on Thursday us doing this with her writing and on Friday us doing this again. That's my plan and the idea I have for these. Okay, and then I have a few things that are just like daily things. So the first one I have is the my year of nature. Nature study is our one thing this year. And so I thought this would be a great thing to add to our morning time. It is just 365 nature-inspired activities and they are things like you're in the desert and you look up to see a bird flying above you to scribe it. Is it big or small? Does it seem friendly or frightening? Tarantulas can survive without food for more than two years. Draw a scrumptious meal for this hungry tarantula. So it's a little bit of creative writing and drawing but I thought it was a great way to bring some nature into our morning time and it gives her kind of something to do while I'm reading some of the other things. Then we have the word of the day. So we will literally just read this each day. So we'll just turn to, I don't know, let's say, it is August 22nd and it's Paradoglia which is the tendency to see a specific or meaningful image in a random visual pattern and then it gives kind of a sentence and a definition for that. Then we have on this day in history and so you just turn to that day. I happened to turn to August 20th and 21st and we'll just read that page. And then we have everything under the sun. One of you, I don't know who, suggested this to go with the on this day in history and I love the idea of it. It's a question and answer every day for the year. So for example, on June 29th, the question is why are tortoises so slow? Let's see the question on October 5th is how does lava harden? October 6th, why does it hurt so much when you bang your elbow? November 16th, why are tortoises green and brown? November 28th, why do birds run away from humans? So just a lot of very interesting questions and answers. And then the last kind of daily thing I have is poetry and it is Tiger Burning Bright, which is an animal poem for every day of the year. We have the nature version of this and we've done it and loved it. So I thought the animal version would be fun. It is just quick little short poems, but beautiful illustrations. And then the last few things that I have in the actual morning basket are the brain quest trivia cards for sixth grade, a puzzle a day, and some fitness dice. And then also some things that I would like to see us do during our morning time is some sort of current events, which right now I am still trying to figure out which way we're gonna go with that. There is like weekly junior newspaper that gets sent, weekly. I kind of like the idea of having something physical that's not a screen, but then we also have World Watch News, CNN 10, and then there's also a current events app. I'm at podcasts that I could use the app for. But again, I don't know which way I'm gonna go because I kind of like the idea of not having to have a screen, not because I dislike screens, not because I don't want Emily to use screens, but because I don't wanna use a screen because the minute I pick up a phone or a tablet, I get distracted by notifications and social media and emails and I don't want that to happen during our morning time because that's like our thing. So we'll see. If we do one of the things that's a screen, I may just use her tablet for that so that I'm not distracted by notifications. And then also we will probably play a really quick two player game to kind of round it out. I did not pick specific ones. We have a spot, actually that's right here behind me and these drawers back here where we keep like the really quick two player games or things that play well as two players like Spotted, Blockus, Canoodle Heads Ahead, those kinds of things, chess, although chess isn't always that quick, but we keep those things back there so I can easily just say, hey, we have time to play a game, just go grab one. So that is what's in our morning time. My plan for all of this is if she needs to get some wiggles out, we will start with the fitness dice. I will basically hand her after that the nature journal and the puzzle a day which will give her two things to kind of work on while I start reading everything. I will more than likely start with Trivia because she loves Trivia and make that super quick. And then I will go through the daily stuff. So a word a day on this day in history, a question for the day and a poem for the day. Once I have gone through that, I will start the other things. I will also go ahead and say in case you're gonna ask this question because I've already thought of it. When we come back to school on a Monday, I am not going to spend Monday redoing the weekend. So for example, if this says June 29th and the 30th and the 31st were on the weekend and we come back Monday, I'm not gonna do the 30th, the 31st and the first. I'm just going to do whatever day we're on. If we miss it for whatever reason, we were on a trip, we weren't here, it was the weekend, we didn't do school that day, whatever, we just won't do that. Like I'm not gonna stress myself out about it and try to play catch up. We'll just move on to whatever the actual date is and if the stuff does stay in our morning basket for all of middle school, which would be six years, we will eventually hit those things again. So that is my plan for the daily stuff in case you're curious. Once we get through the daily stuff, I will do either the two truths and a lie or an idiom or a mad lib. And I would like to finish our morning time out with our success skills is what I'm thinking because this is the one I really wanna make sure that we have the time to discuss, especially because some of the mindfulness are actual exercises for us to do. And then if we have current events, we'll do current events at the end because I'm thinking it may involve a screen and then we would probably play a quick game. And I like to add games because I can use a game to get us back to the table. We typically do our morning basket in the living room, on the couch or in the bed, in my bedroom. And so a game is a really great easy incentive for Emily to say, okay, let's go sit at the table and play spot it. And then we're at the table for whatever afternoon activities and or lessons we need to do. So it's kind of like that sweet spot for me to make sure I'm filling her bucket one last time, to lure her to the table and to kind of close out our basket time, morning time, whatever, with something that she loves. Now, I would absolutely love it if you would tell me as well, do you do some sort of meeting in your homeschool? A morning basket, a bedtime basket, a meeting time, something along those lines. If you do, when do you do it? What is included in it and what do you call it?